


No Fate

by hollycomb



Category: Terminator Salvation (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-02
Updated: 2012-10-02
Packaged: 2017-11-15 11:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/526676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/pseuds/hollycomb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The machines were more brilliant in their engineering of Marcus Wright than they realized. Kyle Reese falls in love with the wrong person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Fate

Kyle is eleven when his father dies. They're scavenging for food, the hunting party down to the two of them since Vick, a stubborn old man who had been with them since his wife was killed back in '16, was killed by the machines several months earlier. Kyle still isn't over it, watching the T-600 gun down their friend, and it doesn't even occur to him that the same thing could happen to his father until it does, Kyle running like mad and only half-realizing that he won't meet up with his dad later, back at the base.

He spends a day ducked inside an old sewer, crying into his hands and waiting for the news that he is now completely alone to start feeling like something he could ever believe. He doesn't remember his mother, and his father is all he's ever had, the thing worth living for, the person who showed him how to shoot, and skin and cook meat, and rig up traps that crush the machines. His father was the person who told him about what the world was like before it ended around Kyle's second birthday, about his mother, and the sister Kyle doesn't remember either, and the way there used to be birds everywhere, hopping around in parking lots, crowded in the trees, singing in the morning. He explained to Kyle why humanity was worth fighting for.

"Because I love you," he'd said, tucking Kyle into his makeshift bed and touching a new cut on Kyle's cheek regretfully. "And the machines will never learn how to do that."

Kyle climbs out of the dried-up sewer when he's too thirsty to wait any longer, trying to remember what his father told him, trying to convince himself that there is something here on earth that is still worth fighting for, something else that could make him remember why it's good to be alive, something he could love.

*

He wanders alone for awhile, not sure how much time passes. Most days he stays in the base, a sort of fort that he and his father built together. His father had tried to make everything a game, to keep Kyle's spirits up; Kyle understands that now. It's so much harder to shoot and kill food without his father beside him to whoop and clap him on the shoulder proudly when Kyle actually shoots something, and cleaning the kill is horrible without his father there to make funny faces when the guts get a little too gross.

Kyle tries to keep up with his lessons, even without his father around to teach them. His father taught him how to read from a small library of books they found through scavenging, and Kyle rereads his favorites, noting some scenes that his father must have skipped over when they read the books together: particularly scary things and sex scenes, mostly. Suddenly a book by James Patterson that always bored him becomes his favorite, because of the scene where one of the bad guys has sex with his girlfriend. All he knows about sex is from a magazine he found in an old gas station convenience store, and he only got to glance through it before his father saw and confiscated it. He figures his father must have it stashed around somewhere, but he must have hid it pretty well.

Days pass slowly and without much intrusion from the machines; Kyle is quiet and small, good at hiding. He has pretend conversations with his dad when he gets bored, and sometimes with his mom, too, asking her questions and inventing her answers in his head. Do you miss me? he asks her, and she says she does, every day, even though he doesn't remember her, which makes him feel bad. Are you in heaven like Dad said? he asks, and she says, Yes, but I still miss you, even in heaven. Is Dad with you? he asks, and she doesn't answer that question, because, for some reason, it's easier for Kyle to imagine his mother and sister in the dreamland of heaven than his father, who was here once with Kyle in the real world, and who still should be.

Sometimes he even talks out loud to his sister, though he can't imagine her at all, because the youngest woman he's ever seen was his father's age, and she was dead.

He tries to keep himself clean, because his father always said that was important, for his health. It's easy enough to find soap in abandoned stores, but dangerous to venture to them, because the machines know where the humans like to scavenge. One day, he nearly gets caught by a T-800, but a hand that comes out of nowhere yanks at his collar and pulls him into an old supply room in what used to be a mega grocery store, and someone puts a hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming.

"Quiet, kid," someone whispers, a man, and Kyle's heart rate skyrockets just like it did when he spotted the T-600, because his father told him early on that humans can hurt you, too.

"It's okay," the person who's holding onto him says when he feels Kyle shaking. "Just keep quiet."

When the coast is clear, Kyle learns that he's stumbled upon a group of people who've been living in the old supermarket, four men who are all roughly his father's age. They make him nervous but they seem nice enough, giving him Oreos and diet soda.

"Ran out of the good stuff awhile back," a man who introduced himself as Jake says. "Down to the diet drinks now."

The supermarket men are not as streamlined as his father was, and Kyle has never seen fat people before, only read about them in books. They're impressed that Kyle has survived alone, and he likes telling them his stories, talking to real people, but at the end of the night they get into what they refer to as the Supply, which consists of a stockpile of dark bottles of alcohol, and they get weepy, talking about the past. Kyle feels nervous again, wishing for his father, almost getting weepy himself.

In the middle of the night, lying on the sleeping bag they've offered him, not sleeping but just thinking, Kyle hears someone crawling over to him in the darkness, and when his eyes adjust he sees that it's one of the men, the guy called Peter, who was quietest during the drinking hour.

"What—" Kyle starts to say, but then there's a hand over his mouth, and Peter pushes Kyle's shoulder down with his other hand.

"Sorry," Peter whispers, his voice shaking. Kyle can hear the other men snoring from their corners of the supply room, and they seem so far away, but maybe they won't help him anyway.

"You're just so smooth," Peter says, nearly crying as he sneaks a hand under Kyle's shirt. "Almost like a girl."

Kyle bites Peter's hand as hard as he can, and Peter screams loud enough to wake the others, who sit up and ask what's wrong, cocking their guns. Kyle scrambles up and runs through the darkness, slams into the door then throws it open, ignoring the shouts from the men who don't know what's going on, his heart pounding as he runs out through the supermarket and into the hot quiet of the night, not looking back.

From then on, he treats other humans like the machines, hiding whenever they come near.

*

He finds Star when he's fourteen. She's maybe eight or nine years old, in the corner of a warehouse where Kyle found an impressive collection of guns, and she's clinging to the corpse of a woman who was probably her mother. It takes Kyle a lot of coaxing to even get Star to drink water from his canteen, and when she finally leaves her dead family, teary-eyed, she still won't speak or let Kyle anywhere near her. She follows him back to the base, walking ten feet behind him. Eventually, she lets him pull her out of the way when she's in imminent danger, but she never gives in to Kyle's attempts to get her to speak. He calls her Star because of her pendant, and she answers to the name, helps him with the cooking and his traps. He teaches her how to play tic-tac-toe.

Only once does he hear her speak, and she's not really using words. She has a nightmare, and Kyle wakes up with a start, hearing her howling on the other side of the base and thinking she's in trouble. He runs to her, and her eyes are so wide when he gets there.

"What's wrong?" he asks. He's got his gun in his hand, the lightweight one he sleeps with. His father used to have names for the guns – Berreta, Colt, Glock – and numbers, too, but to Kyle they're all more or less the same, only some are bigger than others.

Star's breathing begins to go regular again, and she shakes her head. Kyle understands that it was just a nightmare and pats her shoulder. She flinches. They're the closest thing either has to family, but they still keep a certain distance. Kyle doesn't tell her about his dreams, either. He finally found that magazine his father once hid from him, and most of his dreams are confusing flashes of sweat-coated skin and hot breath that leave his pants sticky when he wakes. He wishes he could turn it all off, because he knows it will never mean anything to him except frustration and shame, but he still prefers these dreams to the nightmares, which are mostly about his father's death, that last scream that is still echoing around Kyle's head and probably always will be.

*

When Marcus shows up, Kyle thinks he's a hopeless idiot who has managed to survive only by some dumb luck, but he's quickly proven wrong. Marcus takes Kyle's gun so easily, and Kyle feels like such a failure, as if it's all been for nothing, but Marcus doesn't seem to want to kill him, and in fact saves Kyle and Star when a disabled machine smashes into a building close to the roof they're standing on, debris crashing down around them. Marcus pushes Kyle and Star to the ground and covers their bodies with his. Except for Star and her band-aids, Kyle hasn't been cared for in so long, and he forgot what it felt like. He lies under Marcus as the dust settles, staring up with open awe as Marcus pants onto his forehead, cursing and asking, What the fuck was that, and when Marcus looks down and asks Kyle if he's alright, Kyle isn't afraid of him anymore, though he knows he probably should be.

Marcus is the first person Kyle has brought back to the base since Star, and he actually feels proud to show it off, glad to offer Marcus some of their food, and a little insulted when he doesn't take any. Marcus shows Kyle how to hang on to his gun, and fixes the radio. Kyle hears Connor speaking to the members of the resistance, and he looks up at Marcus again with awe, feels his life beginning to change now that Marcus has arrived.

"Where are you from?" Kyle asks later that night, sitting by his bed, which Marcus has fallen into without asking, though he's not sleeping, just staring into space and looking vaguely irritated. Star is across the room in her little nook of scavenged blankets, fast asleep. She seems calmer with Marcus around, though she's usually even more wary of other people than Kyle is.

"Los Angeles," Marcus says, scoffing. "Originally."

"Me too," Kyle says. "I don't remember it, though, the way it was. Do you?"

"Yeah," Marcus says. "It was a different kind of hellhole."

"Were there birds?" Kyle asks, hoping he doesn't sound childish or stupid. He just misses it so much, hearing stories about the past. Marcus looks at him and frowns.

"Yeah," he says, disbelief and pity in his voice, and Kyle is embarrassed. "There were birds."

"You must have been in some kind of accident," Kyle says. "The way you don't, like, remember anything."

Marcus looks at Kyle the way he has since he arrived, like everything Kyle says is slightly ridiculous. He's the only other light-eyed person Kyle has ever met, though Marcus' are different from his, more blue, less green.

"Yeah," Marcus says, narrowing his eyes. "Some kind of accident. Do you need something, or are you just going to sit there and stare at me all night?"

"Don't you want to – talk to someone?" Kyle asks, his face heating up the way it does when he looks at that magazine. "I mean – where you came from – were there lots of people to talk to?"

Marcus scoffs. "Yeah, prison was a really great place to meet interesting people."

"Prison? Were you at the headquarters, at Skynet? Did you escape?"

"I don't know where I was, kid," Marcus says, holding up his hands as if he surrenders, or as if he wants to shove Kyle away. "I don't know what the fuck's going on."

Kyle looks down at his hands, his face burning hotter. He lies down on the floor, stretching out alongside his bed, folds his hands on his stomach and stares up into the darkness.

"You sleep on the floor?" Marcus says.

"No," Kyle says bitterly. "You're in my bed."

"Sorry," Marcus says, and he gets up. Kyle climbs into the bed, which is just an old mattress pad, folded blankets and towels, and a very flat pillow with a ripped cover. He rolls onto his side and watches Marcus, who stands at the window with his hands on his hips, looking up at the sky. The bed is warm from Marcus' body, and it smells like him. Marcus turns and sees Kyle staring. He sighs and walks over the bed, sitting down beside it.

"You're really alone here," he says, as if he finally believes this.

"Yes," Kyle says, trying not to sound as if he feels sorry for himself. His father always told him they were lucky to be alive. Kyle always tried hard to feel that way. "For a long time."

"You said your dad tried to fix that radio."

"Yeah, well. He did try." Kyle doesn't want to talk about it. Marcus seems to get the picture and drops the subject, looking down to pick the dirt from his fingernails.

"You still want to go to San Francisco?" Kyle asks. Marcus sniffs a little, grins.

"Nah," he says. "Now that I've seen this place, I'm looking to stay."

Kyle actually thinks he's serious for a minute; it's been so long since anyone joked with him. Five years. Marcus turns to grin at Kyle, and suddenly he's not laughing at Kyle but with him, sort of. Kyle smiles.

"You can sleep up here if you want to," Kyle says, scooting over.

"No thanks," Marcus says. "I won't be able to sleep. Feels like I've been asleep for fucking eighty years."

"So you'll stay up and keep watch?" Kyle asks, liking the idea. It's been a long day, and his eyelids are so heavy. He thinks about what happened with the supermarket people, and wonders why he isn't afraid the same thing will happen with Marcus. It's something to do with what happened earlier, lying beneath Marcus while he used his body like a shield. There was nothing wicked in it, and Marcus' eyes are different from any Kyle has ever seen, not only because of their color.

"Sure," Marcus says. "Just go to sleep, okay?" Kyle consents, still turned toward Marcus, curling up a little tighter and tucking his hand under his cheek. He shuts his eyes, but for a long time he can't get to sleep, though he's so tired. He listens to Marcus' breathing, and thrills a little whenever Marcus sighs or shifts against the bed. When Kyle finally gets to sleep he dreams of the magazine people, hot skin under his hands, rough, hungry lips on his neck, his chest, his cock. The dream changes, and suddenly he's lying under Marcus, not on the rooftop like before but in his bed, undressed, still hard.

Kyle opens his eyes with a gasp and sees that dawn is breaking, and Marcus is standing across the room, fooling with the radio again. Kyle is still fully clothed, but the hardon is real. He rolls over, turning his back on the room, and tries to think it away, but his head is still full of that dream, and the way Marcus' body had felt, hovering over him, the way it felt yesterday on the roof, warm and protective and so heavy. Kyle has no reason to trust anybody, but he felt something in Marcus when they were lying together on the roof, coughing dust onto each other's faces. Kyle's world has always been fairly simple, everything classed into good or bad. His father was good, the machines are bad. Eating is good, going hungry is bad. That man in the abandoned supermarket was bad. Marcus, Kyle thinks, is good.

He reaches down into his pants, moving stealthily. Star is rousing on the other side of the base, and Marcus is speaking to her, maybe expecting an answer. Kyle knows he won't get rid of his hardon without doing something about it, and hopefully a few strokes will nip the whole thing in the bud; they usually do. He tries to be quick and still at the same time, rubbing mostly with his fingers so his elbow won't move, using his thumb around the head, smearing precome. He's too nervous to finish, so he shuts his eyes and tries to concentrate on a dream, on the one he had last night about Marcus, Marcus lying on top of him, Kyle naked beneath him, exposed, vulnerable, and proven right about Marcus, who is good, so good, who strokes Kyle's face and licks through his lips and grinds their bodies together. Kyle takes away Marcus' clothes in his fantasy, imagining that his body looks like those of the men who have women bouncing on them in the magazine, only better, and he's so close to coming that he doesn't even hear Marcus walking up behind him until it's much too late.

"Hey," Marcus says, grabbing Kyle's shoulder and rolling him over, and that's all it takes, really, the sound of Marcus' voice, the pressure of his grip on Kyle's shoulder, and Kyle is on his back, exposed, coming into his hand, gasping out apologies as Marcus stares down at him in shock.

"Fuck," Marcus says, releasing Kyle and hurrying away. Kyle rolls toward the wall again, tears pooling in his eyes as he pants through the last throbs of his cock, wiping the mess on the sheets. He's so humiliated his whole body burns, pulsing with shame like hot flashes. Then, quickly, he's angry, buttoning up his pants. Why should he be expected to know how to behave around other people? Star leaves him to his own devices, doesn't sneak up on him, never grabs him. If Marcus wants to leave in a huff because Kyle had the nerve to jerk off in his presence, fine. It's not like Kyle needs anybody, not like he can't just keep living on his own, Star silent on the periphery, enough human contact to keep him from going insane.

He gets out of bed when he's steadied himself, his face still red. Star is obliviously finishing the last of the coyote. Marcus is at the door, impatient.

"You gonna show me where these cars are or what?" Marcus says, and Kyle glowers at him.

"Fine," he says, grabbing his pack and stuffing it with ammunition and a canteen filled with water. He picks up his gun and heads for the door, his cheeks on fire under Marcus' stare. "C'mon, Star," he says, and she follows. Kyle walks past Marcus without looking at him, and Marcus follows, too.

They walk. Star is in her own world as usual, staring dreamily up at the cloudless sky. Marcus keeps glancing at Kyle as if he's about to say something, and Kyle pretends not to notice.

"Must be hard," Marcus finally says. "Teenager in a world without girls."

"I don't want to talk about it!" Kyle snaps, and Marcus holds up his hands, grinning a little. Kyle hates him for being amused by what happened. Smug fucker.

They get to the lot with the cars Marcus was looking for and he immediately begins picking through them. Kyle follows him, alternately scowling at the ground and keeping an eye on Star, who really does seem different since Marcus arrived, less guarded, more dreamy and childlike. When Marcus gets one of the cars running, Star hops into the passenger seat as if she's ready for a drive, but Marcus tells her to get out.

"You're just gonna leave us?" Kyle shouts in disbelief, as if Marcus owes them anything. He won't meet Kyle's eyes as he climbs into the Jeep. Kyle feels as if he's been promised something only to have it taken away, but he should know better than to expect anything else from the world by now, and he shouldn't feel so surprised when a scout for the machines is suddenly upon them, tipped off by the music that blasted from the Jeep when Marcus first got it running.

"Get in!" Marcus screams, pulling Kyle into the Jeep as Star clambers back into the passenger seat. They go screaming out of the lot, the scout in pursuit, and Marcus tells Kyle to drive, which is terrifying and exhilarating, even in the midst of running for their lives. Kyle never, never thought he'd drive a car. Marcus destroys the scout by throwing a wrench at it while Kyle swerves along the road, feeling invincible in the company of Marcus and his 'wrench strategy,' the highway stretching endlessly ahead of them.

"Fuck!" Marcus says from the backseat, hovering near Kyle's shoulder. "Pull over, I'm driving."

Kyle does as he asked, wondering if Marcus will throw him and Star out of the car, but he doesn't even ask Kyle to climb into the back, lets him scoot over to sit between Marcus and Star as Marcus peels off down the highway. Kyle isn't even sure where they're going, but it doesn't really matter. Marcus tried to leave them and he couldn't. Not even after what he saw Kyle do at the base. Kyle turns red all over again, thinking of it.

"We'll need gas," Kyle calls over the wind after they've put a good amount of distance between them and the wrecked scout, their heart rates beginning to return to normal.

"No shit," Marcus says. "Got any idea where we can get some?"

"Just check the dead filling stations," Kyle says with a shrug. "You'll start seeing them pretty soon."

They check two stations and find nothing, then begin down a long stretch of desert highway that seems as if it was empty even before the apocalypse. Star falls asleep, leaning against the passenger door, and Kyle tips his head back to look at the sky, which is packed with thick white clouds. He's only seen the sky this way a few times before, as if someone forgot that the world had ended down below. His eyelids start to droop, and he glances over at Marcus, who has his eyes narrowed at the road.

"Why do you want to go to San Francisco?" Kyle asks.

"Don't know," Marcus says, which is almost definitely a lie. "Why do you want to meet up with this Connor guy so badly? You really think any man can do something about this nightmare?"

"Someone who can organize the rest of us," Kyle says. "Yeah. And you should come with us. You were – pretty good, back there."

Marcus glances at Kyle, and Kyle holds his gaze for the first time since the incident that morning.

"I don't want to be organized," Marcus says, looking back to the road. "And you. You just want company."

"Company?" Kyle scoffs. "I've got that already."

"What, the kid who doesn't speak?"

"Yeah, and you."

Marcus sneaks a look at him, and Kyle grins sleepily, already beginning to doze off, his eyelids sinking. He's never fallen asleep during the day before; there's usually so much to do before nightfall. It feels good, letting his eyes slip shut with the sun on his face, Star asleep beside him and Marcus driving them along toward whatever. He lets his head loll forward a few times, the jerk of his neck waking him up, then settles his cheek onto Marcus' shoulder, trying to make it seem accidental. He waits for Marcus to shrug him off, but Marcus just sighs a little, under his breath, and the soft sound of it pulls down through Kyle like an anchor.

Kyle sleeps more deeply than he expected, dreaming about nothing, conscious of the sun on his skin and Marcus' steady breath. When he wakes up, the light is going orange with the start of the sunset, and he's slumped fully against Marcus, his left hand on Marcus' leg, fingers spread out possessively. Kyle sits up with a groan, embarrassed by the way he was clutching, and by how good it felt to be pressed against someone else, against Marcus.

"You alright?" Marcus asks, still looking ahead through the windshield, and Kyle laughs. Star is awake now, and she smiles over at Kyle sympathetically, as if even she knows how much he needed that.

"Yeah," Kyle says, his voice deep with sleep. "I'm okay."

"Sunburned, though," Marcus says. "Look." He nods up at the cracked rearview mirror, and Kyle sits up to look into it, leaning onto Marcus again as he does, because it's tilted toward him. He so rarely sees his reflection, and it always startles him a little, never seems to match the image of himself that he keeps in his head. Marcus is right, his cheeks have gone red from the sun. He sits back, leaving his hand on the seat, his pinkie finger just barely touching Marcus' stolen resistance coat. He feels good the way he did when he was a kid, when he and his dad would play checkers with stones and his dad would tell funny stories about his brothers, who used to fight him over games of checkers when they lost. More than good, he feels safe, which makes him nervous, but it's a bubbling kind of anxiety that sits in his chest not like a warning but like a reminder that he's alive, and that it's a good thing.

"We should find a place to sleep before it gets dark," Kyle says. "You haven't found gas yet?" he asks Marcus, though he knows that Marcus hasn't pulled over since Kyle fell asleep on his shoulder.

"Nope." Marcus points down the road, at the shape of a distant building. "How 'bout there?" he says. "For the night?"

"Looks good to me," Kyle says, though there's no telling what the place might hold until they get there. It turns out to be a strip of outlet stores, signs about sales still curling in some of its windows. They walk past the shops cautiously as the sun sinks deeper behind the mountain, Kyle and Marcus with their weapons raised, Star walking between them. A jackrabbit startles them at one point, and Marcus shoots it as it's bounding away.

"Dinner," he says to Kyle, who grins.

They break into what used to be a men's clothing store, and Kyle sits on the sidewalk outside to clean the rabbit so that they won't have to sleep with the smell of its guts. Star entertains herself with a collection of cuff links at the counter inside, handling them like precious jewels, and Marcus comes to lean in the store's open doorway, watching Kyle work. It's kind of cozy, despite the rabbit guts, the three of them quiet and tired as the sun goes down.

"Think I might find a new belt in there," Kyle says as he works, wiping his knife on his pants. "Maybe a new shirt. Those shoes looked pretty worthless, though. It's funny, the stuff people used to wear."

"How long have you been doing this?" Marcus asks as Kyle slices up the meat. There's not much, but it's fresh, and they're lucky to have it. He looks up at Marcus with a frown.

"Skinning rabbits?"

"Fending for yourself," Marcus says.

"Five years," Kyle says, looking back to his work. "Since my dad."

"Right." Marcus starts breaking up a wooden chair he found in the store's dressing room, for firewood.

"How 'bout you?" Kyle asks when Marcus stacks the wood. He crumbles old advertisements for the store's sales and shoves them underneath it.

"How about me what?" Marcus says.

"You were by yourself when we found you."

Marcus sniffs a little, as if this is funny. He holds his hand out and Kyle reaches into his pocket for the block of flint he uses for cooking, handing it to him.

"Yeah, always," Marcus says, striking the flint with his knife. "I always fended for myself. Well, me and my brother."

"You had a brother?" Kyle says, impressed by this. Marcus says nothing, just flicks the knife hard against the flint, sparks shooting off and roaring to life against the brittle paper. "I had a sister," Kyle says. Marcus looks up at him, and some silent understanding passes between them. The dead are all around them, a parking lot full of ghosts. Kyle shudders and hurries to cook the rabbit, ready to get inside the safety of the store as the last of the sun disappears.

After they eat, they close themselves inside the store, Star moving from the cuff links to the ties, which she engineers into knots and braids before dropping to sleep beside the display. Kyle puts two folded dress shirts under her head for a pillow and a suit jacket over her for a blanket. He sits beside her for awhile, watching Marcus out of the corner of his eye. He's at the large front window, his gun resting on the sill, elbow propped beside it as he stares out at the night. The moon is bright, and Marcus' silhouette pulls Kyle right across the room. He's good at moving around quietly, and Marcus looks surprised when Kyle is suddenly standing beside him. Saying nothing, Kyle sinks slowly to his knees. Marcus doesn't break eye contact, just watches Kyle like he's another thing about the world that he can't understand. Kyle has never met someone who is able to just reject the things about the world that are horrible, and he wonders if that's why Marcus seems so strong, almost invincible.

"What?" Marcus says, his voice deep and a little rough, but Kyle doesn't startle away. He scoots closer, his knees almost touching Marcus' thigh and his heart pounding so hard that he's afraid Marcus will hear it in the quiet of the room.

"I just –" Kyle says, whispering, not for Star's sake but because he couldn't possibly get his voice out any louder, he's stretched so thin by how much he wants what he doesn't know how to ask for. "I just slept so good before," he says, dropping his eyes away from Marcus' with embarrassment. When he looks up again Marcus is still staring at him, his eyes a little softer at the corners, or maybe Kyle is imagining things. But he feels something pass between them, that human thing, that thing that the machines could never teach themselves to reproduce.

"C'mere," Marcus says, sitting back against the wall and spreading himself open a little wider, his knees sliding apart. Kyle lets out the choppy breath that he'd been holding in and moves forward cautiously, falling into Marcus' arms when they slide around him. He sinks against Marcus' chest, his breath still coming out in sharp shudders as he closes his eyes and disappears into the heat of Marcus' body, clinging as hard as he can. Tears sting at his eyes, and he has to chew his lip to keep it from shaking into a sob. Marcus rubs his hand up the back of Kyle's neck, then into his hair, and one tear does escape down Kyle's cheek when the pads of Marcus' fingers scratch at his scalp, making him shiver, barely able to hold down a moan.

"Poor guy," Marcus says, like Kyle is a dog with three legs. "All by yourself."

Kyle nods and pinches his eyes up tighter, more tears streaking down his dirty cheeks. He curls up against Marcus, his knees pressed to Marcus' chest, his hand fisted in Marcus' shirt. Never never never let me go: he wants to cry it out all night long, but he doesn't dare say anything, because he knows his voice would shake with his tears. He lifts his wet face to Marcus' neck and pushes it against his skin, feeling the hard pump of Marcus' pulse against his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. Marcus is so warm, and so much bigger than Kyle, and so, so good: Kyle can feel it pouring out of him, and in the moment Marcus feels like the only good thing in the world, which is almost unbearable, like being inches from the sun, needing the heat and burning up against it.

"Okay," Marcus says, maybe a little bothered by Kyle's crying, and Kyle wishes he could stop. Marcus strokes Kyle's hair, and again Kyle feels like a hopeless animal, a stray. "You're okay," Marcus says.

Kyle wants to say, No I'm not, this is gonna blow me apart, because he feels like he's in pieces and only Marcus' arms are holding him together, but his voice still isn't working, so he only whimpers wordlessly, nuzzling his face against Marcus' neck until he works up the nerve to lick him, just a little. Marcus goes stiff, and his hand stops moving in Kyle's hair.

"Careful," Marcus says, and Kyle has no idea what he means, so he just opens his mouth against Marcus' neck, licks and sucks at his skin, kisses his neck wildly, his cock already so hard in his pants. Marcus holds him still, closing his fingers into Kyle's hair and tipping his head back so that Kyle is forced to look up at his face. Marcus looks vaguely concerned, maybe a little disturbed, and the softness is draining from his eyes, being replaced with something else.

"What are you doing?" Marcus asks, whispering. He glances across the shop at Star, who is still sound asleep.

"I don't know," Kyle cries honestly, clinging to Marcus again. Marcus sighs, and it's so huge under Kyle's body, lifting him up and setting him back down. Kyle sobs against his chest, humiliated and dizzy with arousal, his cock throbbing with every breath he takes, because the air in the shop is full of the scent of Marcus' body. Kyle is so beside himself that it takes him awhile to realize that Marcus is hard, too, his cock a massive presence under Kyle's trembling thighs. Kyle sucks in his breath with surprise and shifts downward, hears the barely-swallowed groan Marcus just manages to contain. He looks up at Marcus with his wet face open, not embarrassed anymore. Marcus is breathing faster now, looking at Kyle like he wants to spare him whatever's about to happen. Kyle shakes his head.

"You can have whatever you want," Kyle whispers, sniffling. He thinks of that man in the supermarket so long ago, how he would have died before he gave up anything to him. Why is it different now, because Marcus is fucking beautiful? Because he smells so good, and feels like solid, real salvation under Kyle's shaking hands? Because Kyle is old enough now to know what it feels like to ache for someone's skin against his, all the time, to dream about nothing else?

"You should never say that," Marcus whispers gruffly, as if he's angry about the offer. He takes Kyle's face in both hands, tips his head back further. "Not you, not ever."

He crushes his mouth over Kyle's, teaching him how to kiss in hungry gulps and harsh pulls of his tongue across Kyle's lips. Kyle shifts himself around, straddling Marcus' lap, his knees pressed to Marcus' sides and his cock so hard against the warm flat of Marcus' stomach. He's begging with his body, legs open, but unable to stop kissing Marcus, swallowing up his breath like water, drowning under it. Marcus reaches down to close one big hand over Kyle's crotch, massaging it roughly and biting at Kyle's neck when he throws his head back to breathe out his moans as quietly as he can. The pressure in Kyle's cock builds to a sharpness he's never felt before, and he yelps when he comes, pushing the sound into Marcus' mouth as he fills his pants with come, shaking with the full-body pulse of his orgasm. Marcus drags his teeth carefully over Kyle's earlobe as Kyle shudders out the last drops, his arms around Marcus' shoulders. He's already thinking about what he needs to do to Marcus to repay him for that, and Marcus is rock hard under Kyle's ass, but Kyle needs a minute, feels boneless and exhausted, his head dropping to Marcus' chest. Marcus seems to understand this, and he breathes hard into Kyle's hair, snaking a hand up under Kyle's shirt to rub his hot palm across Kyle's back.

"Anything you want," Kyle says, practically drooling, already half asleep. "Anything." Then he remembers the magazine, what the men in the pictures seem to enjoy having done to them by the women, and Kyle might not be a woman but he does have a mouth. He scrambles down Marcus' body, swallowing his anxiety with a sleep-tempered moan, and starts working on Marcus' jeans. He looks up to see Marcus watching him, his mouth just slightly open, eyes glazed.

"You want my mouth on you?" Kyle whispers, just to make sure, and Marcus shuts his eyes, then reopens them slowly.

"Fuck," he breathes out, his cock jerking under Kyle's hand, and Kyle takes that as a yes. He gets Marcus' jeans open and pulls out his cock, which is so big and thick that it's sort of mesmerizing, and Kyle wants his mouth on it as soon as he sees it, he wants it so bad. He licks up the length and Marcus groans, then stuffs his hand in his mouth to keep himself quiet. Kyle licks him again, appreciating the sweat-stained taste of him, and the secret, mushroomy smell between his legs as they open wider for Kyle's mouth. He licks across Marcus' balls, pulling his jeans down further to draw his tongue underneath them before coming back up to swallow as much of him as he can. Marcus is struggling not to scream; Kyle can feel it in the tremble that moves through his whole body as he bites down on his palm and jerks his hips up in measured little thrusts, fucking his cock deeper into Kyle's mouth, until Kyle chokes a little and has to sit back, panting onto Marcus' slick cockhead.

"Okay," Marcus says, grabbing Kyle's arms and pulling him up, into his lap again. "Okay."

Kyle has no idea what's going to happen next, but he's surrendered to it, fully awake now, his cock hard again. Marcus kisses him, biting at his lips, then slips a finger into Kyle's mouth, letting Kyle suck it like he tried to suck Marcus' cock, which was really too big to fit in there. When he takes his finger away Kyle is sorry to lose it, wants something of Marcus' in his mouth all the time, and when Marcus rips Kyle's pants down he has no idea that Marcus' slicked finger is going to end up between his ass cheeks. Kyle gasps when Marcus rubs down through his cleft until he finds what he was looking for, that puckered skin, something Kyle never thought might make him feel good, but it does, and he opens his legs wider for Marcus' finger, moaning when he pushes it inside. Kyle nods drowsily, twisting himself down harder onto Marcus' finger, delirious and disoriented by the feeling of being opened up, something he never knew he needed this badly.

He sobs when Marcus turns him around and replaces his finger with that thick cock, which is still wet from Kyle's mouth but not enough, and it burns all the way in, slow and sharp, he and Marcus both breathing so hard that the glass on the shop window begins to fog. When Kyle is completely seated in Marcus' lap he slumps backward, shaking hard, Marcus' arms locked around his chest. He pushes his face back against Marcus' neck and winces until the feeling of Marcus being lodged fully inside him begins to feel okay, maybe even good, the burn fading to a sting that makes Kyle hiss when Marcus shifts, moving inside him.

"You," Marcus breathes in his ear, squeezing him tighter. "Kyle." He reaches down and takes hold of Kyle's cock, which had softened a bit with the shock of Marcus pushing into him. He's quickly hard again in Marcus' hand, and when Marcus sneaks his thumb down to rub over Kyle's balls Kyle loses it, coming with a low moan that he pushes against Marcus' neck, which is sweaty now, so hot. Marcus thrusts up into Kyle as he's still pulsing with his orgasm, and Kyle is dead weight in Marcus' arms, so broken open, given over completely. When he relaxes those thrusts feel so good, Marcus working himself up into him harder and harder, until he grunts against the side of Kyle's head and fills him up so completely that his come is already leaking from Kyle when he pulls out.

Kyle is nearly comatose with stunned satisfaction, sore and exhausted, and he slumps onto the floor between Marcus and the wall, trying to keep his eyes open so that he can see Marcus leaning beside him, looking down at him and touching his face, moving his thumb over a cut on Kyle's lip.

"Oh, God," Marcus says, and he sounds kind of sad. Kyle shuts his eyes, then opens them when Marcus moves away. He returns with a fancy pair of flannel pajamas, rolls the pants up to rest his head on them and tears open the buttons on the shirt to spread it over Kyle like a blanket. Marcus lies beside him, and Kyle watches Marcus' eyes for as long as he can, sleep yanking him under before too long.

He doesn't dream about anything, but he wakes several times, the unfamiliar surface of the floor making him wonder where he is. When he wakes up Marcus is there, not sleeping but on his back and staring at the ceiling, his eyes gone soft again. He doesn't notice Kyle watching him, and Kyle can't stay awake for long, feeling far more tired than he ever has, which is something, really, because his life has been pretty exhausting so far. He wants to sleep for days, stay inside the shop for weeks, or the rest of his life, doing what he and Marcus did every night, and dropping to sleep with determination, the world erased around him, but he wakes up after dawn with Marcus still leaning beside him, shaking his shoulder.

"Hey," Marcus says. "We should get going." He looks a little guilty, and Kyle wants to tell him that he has nothing to be ashamed of, that he saved Kyle's life last night, turned the world onto its side forever.

"Why?" Kyle asks hoarsely, and Marcus grins, just barely, then lets it fade.

"I don't know," he says. "We can't stay here."

And that's true of everywhere in the world now, so they get up, Kyle hazy and slow; Marcus helps him stand. Kyle gets a new belt from a neat rack of them in the middle of the store, and Star pockets all the cuff links she can carry. They linger a little bit longer than they should, the sun rising too fast. Kyle knows already, when he changes into a pair of clean boxer shorts in the store's dressing room, that their brief reprieve is over.

The rest is irrelevant history. They come to a gas station that actually has fuel, but they meet with a gang that doesn't want to share it, until an old woman among them sees Star and takes pity. It feels like the sort of break they've earned, and Kyle shoves stale Ho-Hos and rock hard beef jerky into his mouth while Marcus stands over them like a shepherd, but then the roof disappears, and the machines are back, like always, the reprieve over, the real world returned.

They're going to get away, because Marcus is going to save them, but the machines are so relentless, and Kyle expects something to happen as he's being yanked into the shuttle with the others, expects Marcus to blank the whole thing away with a flick of his hand. It's not that easy, but Marcus jumps on the transport and splits it open with an ax, and all the time Kyle is smiling, waiting for Marcus to save him, Marcus who has come out of nowhere to change Kyle's life, but then Marcus slips, and he falls, and he's gone, and Kyle is still waiting, all the way to Skynet, to find out how Marcus is going to reclaim him.

*

 

He's shoved into a cell at Skynet's headquarters by the machines, alone, left to wonder why they haven't killed him yet and if Star and the old woman who helped them are even alive. There is nothing in the cell, it's just a set of plastic walls, and Kyle curls up with his knees to his chest, waiting. Marcus will come for him; Kyle has become more and more convinced of this since he arrived in the nightmare of the prison. Marcus jumped onto the transport to save him, and even if he fell two thousand feet, Marcus will show up again, he will rip the door from Kyle's cell and pull him up by the collar of his shirt, drag him to safety.

Kyle shuts his eyes and has pretend conversations with Marcus. They talk about where they will go, how they will survive, how they'll serve the resistance. Marcus holds him the way he did that night in the men's clothing shop, which already seems so long ago. He strokes Kyle's hair, kisses his forehead, tells him he'll never leave him. When Kyle drops to sleep he dreams of Marcus walking across the desert, coming back to Kyle on foot, telling anyone he comes across the name of the person he's seeking, Kyle Reese, as if everyone should know him, as if everyone else in the world is only a stepping stone Marcus will bounce from on his way back to Kyle.

It's not Marcus who comes for Kyle but John Connor, a name Kyle only learns as he's on the way out of the Skynet hell, still waiting for Marcus to arrive as an elevator takes him up to the roof of the complex. He ends up in a helicopter with Star and the old woman who'd tried to take care of them before. For the first time, he thinks that Marcus might have died that day when the Transporter took Kyle and Star, when he fell toward the ravine, but then he is walking across the roof, helping John Connor limp into the helicopter. Everything is so loud; Skynet blows up like a supernova, and it doesn't feel like a victory, but Marcus is sitting beside Kyle again, and Kyle is clinging to him, and to Star, and the helicopter flies farther and farther from the wreckage of Skynet, until it's just an orange glow in the distance, an unpleasant smell of burning metal.

"You came," Kyle says, staring up at Marcus, who seems stunned, as if he's seen much more than a sterile prison cell since they've been apart. He looks down at Kyle and shakes his head.

"You're alive," Marcus says, quiet enough to keep his relief from the others, who are crowded around Connor. Marcus touches Kyle's face, and strokes the line of his jaw with his thumb. "I thought—"

Kyle nods, understanding. He hugs himself against Marcus, and Star does, too. Outside, the sun is rising. Connor is groaning, and Kyle hopes he'll be okay, but he can't help but be relieved anyway, because whatever happens, Marcus is here, in his arms again, that thumping heartbeat under Kyle's ear.

They land at the base of what remains of the resistance, and Kyle is so tired and hungry that he's stumbling. Marcus brings him a canteen of water, and Kyle drinks from it while staring at Marcus, trying not to smile, because he feels like he'll choke on the water if he does. Marcus looks so perfect, better even than he did before, as if he's been enhanced by whatever he went through while they were apart.

"God," Kyle says, still panting from gulping the water. "I knew it. I knew you'd come back, that you'd –" He trails off there, because he can't properly articulate what Marcus has done for him. He's made the world worth living in, so easily, and no one else could have come close to doing this, to opening up the sky for Kyle, making it a sky again, not just a cage he lives under. Marcus grins and takes the canteen, having a quick drink before handing it back.

"Hey," he says, shaking his head. "I just wanted to know you were alright."

"I'm alright," Kyle says, stepping closer to Marcus, the canteen closed in his hands. "I'm alright."

There's a commotion. Connor is dying. Kyle feels horrible; Connor was their hope, the voice of the resistance. Kyle stands back and feels so sorry for Connor's wife, who is hugely pregnant and barely able to announce to the others that John's heart won't hold out.

He barely hears Marcus' offer, maybe because it's so stupid, so juvenile: Take mine. Blair, a woman who is beautiful and who has been hovering close to Marcus since he returned to the base, protests and draws close. Marcus says something to her – second chances – and she stands on her tiptoes to kiss him. Marcus looks to Kyle when she runs off, her hand over her mouth and her eyes wet. Kyle stands in place, his own eyes full but not running over, because he can't believe it, he won't. Connor didn't say No, or Are you sure? or Why me, why should I be saved? He just looked at Marcus like he knew Marcus was doing the right thing, offering his life for Connor's, as if Connor knows he'll matter and that Marcus never will. Kyle walks out of the tent while Connor's wife sobs with happiness over the offer of Marcus' heart.

He stands there shaking, knowing Marcus will come. He doesn't understand, when Marcus' hands are tight on his shoulders, how he can count on this and still be so knocked over by Marcus' offer to die for Connor, which can't be real. He turns to Marcus, who is staring down at him with that same pity Kyle saw in the clothing shop, and Kyle glowers at him.

"You," Kyle stammers. "You can't."

"He's going to help the human race," Marcus says, still holding Kyle's shoulders. "You said so yourself."

"No," Kyle says, shaking his head. "You don't know that. He doesn't know that, nobody does—"

"Hey," Marcus says, sharp enough to steady Kyle for a moment. Marcus takes hold of Kyle's face and tips it up, watching his eyes spill over, watching Kyle dissolve into a blubbering child in his grip, because this can't be happening, not after everything they beat, the machines and the odds.

"Don't go," Kyle cries, well past humiliation. "Don't leave me."

"You'll be glad I did," Marcus says. "You'll be glad I saved Connor."

"No," Kyle says, shaking his head, and he's sure, there's no question. "I want you, I want you –"

"You don't," Marcus says, smoothing his hands down to Kyle's shoulders. "You just think – but I'm no good, what I did to you –"

"That's the only good thing anyone's ever done to me," Kyle says, really crying now, breaking apart. "And I – and I wanted you back – for that, for anything –"

"Stop," Marcus says harshly, frowning. "Stop crying. Kyle. Stop it."

"I can't," Kyle says, shaking his head, and he's not worthy of the jacket Connor offered him, could hardly process the gesture in the midst of Marcus' suicidal vow.

"Just stop," Marcus says, giving Kyle a shake, his frown deepening. "You'll be better off without me, you'll know that someday."

"No," Kyle sobs, "I – I can't even – all I thought about when I was in that cell – was you, and –"

"Marcus," someone calls, and it's Kate, Connor's wife, impatient to get started. She eyes him and Kyle, frowning a little. "Are we – are we doing this or not?"

Marcus looks down at Kyle as if he'll answer for him. Kyle's eyes are red and ruined, his throat cracked with sobs. If Marcus really wants Kyle to decide, he will, he'll make everyone here hate him, he'll bring down the resistance, he'll do anything to keep Marcus with him, not even for that sort of thing they did the last time they were alone together, but because he believes, now, that Marcus could save everyone on earth just as well as Connor, if not better.

"I'm ready," Marcus tells Kate, without waiting for an answer from Kyle. She nods and slips back into the tent. Marcus looks down at Kyle for what they both know will be the last time.

"You're not alone anymore," Marcus says, squeezing Kyle's shoulder. Kyle is so furious with him that he's tempted to jerk out of his grip, but he's not going to waste Marcus' last touch, no matter how angry he is. "These people," Marcus says. "They'll take care of you, they're good, they'll be your friends –"

"I don't care," Kyle says, making himself hard, his eyes going dry. "I don't care what happens." He looks up at Marcus, glaring, and it's so hard, because the blue of Marcus' eyes is the softest thing in the world, after all, after everything. They say that Marcus is half machine, and Kyle doesn't care. He knows what he felt, and it was human, it still is, staring him right in the face.

"Don't say that," Marcus says. "Don't say you don't care."

"If you're gone," Kyle says. "I don't care about anything."

Marcus shakes his head and glances at the door of the tent. He looks back to Kyle, drawing his hands up from Kyle's shoulders to hold his face. Kyle bites his trembling bottom lip. His head is beginning to pound, and he blinks over his raw, dry eyes.

"You just don't know," Marcus says. "You don't know what I did."

"I don't care," Kyle says, because nothing else matters. Marcus pulls Kyle against his chest to hug him, but it's over too fast, Kate again at the door of the tent, clearing her throat.

"Please," she says, her voice as weak as Kyle's. "He's fading."

Kyle doesn't watch Marcus die, mostly because he still can't believe it's happening. He just got Marcus back, minutes ago, and he knew, was so sure, that he wouldn't lose him again. He sits outside the tent until Star finds him, and for the first time since they became allies she leans against him, hugging his arm, because she knows him well enough to know that he's dying, too.

Some men dig a grave. Kyle doesn't go to the funeral, if it can even be called that. He hears the clang though, the loud, metallic sound of Marcus' compromised body landing in his grave, robbed of his heart, mostly terminator now.

In Connor's base, Kyle is treated to regular meals, and is respected as an honored guest, as if he's already done something worthwhile. Kate Brewster delivers Connor's baby, and Star is smitten with her, a girl named Sarah. Blair Williams falls in love with a man named Andrew, a fellow soldier, and becomes pregnant herself. Kyle turns seventeen, and he still goes to his comfortable, freshly laundered bed and thinks of Marcus every night. Marcus with his blue eyes. Connor's are light-colored, too, green like Kyle's, but Kyle recoils at the sight of them. Every time he sees Connor he thinks of Marcus' heart beating strong inside him. Stolen.

Connor doesn't seem to notice, and he treats Kyle as if he's a treasured friend, which makes Kyle suspicious, but he doesn't shy away from Connor's invitation to learn more about the time displacement equipment. Connor seems to want Kyle to know every in and out of the machine, and Kyle isn't sure what he's done to deserve the privilege, but the idea of traveling back in time is the only thing in the world that interests him since he lost Marcus, who once felt like his future.

One afternoon, Connor is working on the displacement equipment in his quarters and invites Kyle in to help him with something that needs tweaking. While Connor fools with the mechanics of the problem, Kyle wanders around his room. There is a picture on Connor's bedside table, a woman Kyle has never seen before.

"Who's this?" he asks, holding it up. Connor turns from his work, and his face changes when he sees the picture in Kyle's hand, going soft like Kyle has never seen it before.

"My mother," Connor says, and he stares at Kyle as if Kyle should say something tremendously comforting, as if Kyle has some responsibility in his response. Kyle sets the picture down.

"Oh," he says. "She's pretty."

Connor disappears that afternoon.

*

Connor's teams searches frantically for their leader. They comb the base and the outskirts, watch security tape, and can't understand what happened. It's as if Connor just vanished out of thin air. When Connor's daughter disappears as well, the chain of command quickly deteriorates, everyone suspicious and accusing each other of killing Connor to try and usurp leadership. Kate is inconsolable. By the end of the day, people are asking who Connor was, as if they never knew him. Kyle feels blurry and confused himself, and he holds onto the only thing that's kept him sane for the past year, the memory of Marcus, that day when he leaned over Kyle to protect him from the debris from the machine that crashed near the roof in L.A., and the night that followed, the way he'd shown Kyle the opposite of being alone, locking their bodies together and syncing their breath, better than anything that a machine could do, and better than any human, too. If Marcus was both, Kyle doesn't care. He thinks of him every day.

Days pass, and Kyle keeps to himself, able to fly under the radar because of his size and his relative unimportance in the great scheme of things. He lies in his bed, staring at the picture of Marcus that he stole from the file the resistance keeps on the Marcus Wright project. They were able to hack into Skynet after the explosion and learn more about it, including more about Marcus himself, before he became a machine. While the others are preoccupied with the crumbling order of the base, Kyle sneaks into the data room and steals Marcus' entire file. No one will miss it now. He combs through the details of Marcus' life: born in L.A., he grew up in Santa Rosa, dropped out of high school when he was sixteen, was arrested for petty theft at seventeen. His brother was a small time drug dealer who roped Marcus into robbing a big cocaine smuggler, leading to the brother's death and Marcus' arrest for killing two cops. Kyle lies on his side while everything Connor organized goes to pieces outside the door of his closet-sized room, staring at his picture of Marcus -- a mug shot, he looks furious and hard -- and thinking about Marcus' life in the past, before Skynet found him, before he was locked up and hardened and made into a pawn for the machines.

He wonders if Connor's disappearance has anything to do with the time displacement equipment, if he was in there working on it and accidentally got himself sent elsewhere. They haven't tested the equipment with actual humans yet. Maybe Connor got impatient and tested it on himself; they're not even sure if humans will be able to travel through time and space the way the inanimate objects and rats they've put into the transport chamber have been able to. Kyle yawns and tucks the picture of Marcus back into his pillowcase. He would have volunteered to test the equipment if he thought Connor would let him. He would have asked to go back to the time when Marcus was still a teenager, Kyle's age, before his life was ruined.

Kyle sits up in bed, his breath catching. Outside, someone is discharging a gun; there's a shriek. What's stopping him now from testing the displacement equipment on himself? His fingers curl into his bedsheets and his heart begins to race. He's got nothing left here, now, not even Connor. Marcus gave up his heart for nothing, and it's not right. Connor has taught Kyle so much about the displacement equipment, more than anyone else on the base, as if Kyle is some genius child scientist, though really all he can do is nod while Connor talks about the equipment's operation. It's as if Connor wanted Kyle to use the equipment. Thinking this, he takes a last look at Marcus' picture, then hurries out of his room.

The base is in chaos. Some members of the resistance want to look to Kate for direction, but she's too distraught to lead. Men are fighting over who Connor really considered to be his second in command. Kyle weaves through the anarchy and arrives at the time displacement chamber, shutting the door behind him. He gasps when he realizes he's not alone. Kate Brewster is standing before the chamber, staring at it with wide, unseeing eyes.

"Kate," Kyle says, approaching her cautiously. "What -- are you doing in here?" He hates that she's beat him to it, that she's probably had the same idea he has. She probably wants to go back and try to save Connor.

Kate turns slowly, and her eyes shine with tears as she gazes dreamily at Kyle. He shifts uncomfortably, eying the displacement equipment. Maybe Kate is so out of her mind that she'll try to destroy it. Kyle won't let her; he's never really accepted that Marcus is dead, and somewhere he isn't, somewhere he's just waiting for Kyle to come along, to save him, to make things different.

"Kyle," Kate says, her voice soft with the exhaustion of grief. She walks to him, and Kyle stiffens, afraid of her. She's lost her husband and her daughter and she's like a ghost herself, wild-eyed.

"We couldn't make you love her," she says, her voice trembling. Kyle shakes his head.

"What?" he asks. Maybe she's talking about Star, but Victoria will take care of her better than Kyle can now. He can only think about one thing: turning the equipment on, standing in the chamber, and being taken away from here. If it works, he'll search the past until he finds Marcus and he'll figure out some way to change Marcus' life, to keep him from ever becoming a machine. If it doesn't work, well. He doesn't have anything left to lose. He might as well try.

Kate touches her mouth, and turns to look at the machine.

"Oh, God," she says, shaking her head. "You want to use it, don't you?"

Kyle says nothing, his pulse hammering now. His hands curl into fists at his sides, and he's not sure what he'll do if Kate tries to stop him. She walks forward and puts two gentle hands on his shoulders.

"They won," she says, her voice shaking. "They beat him. I don't even think they could have anticipated how they would do it. You loved someone else. You're going back for him, not her."

Kyle shakes his head, confused and close to pushing her away and making a break for the transport chamber. But the equipment requires delicate calculations, and Kyle isn't even sure he'll be able to input them correctly, let alone do it in a mad rush.

"Go," Kate says, her fingers closing around Kyle's shoulders. There is more gunfire from out in the base, a scream. "Go on." Kate guides Kyle toward the chamber. "It's too late for anything else," she says, pushing him inside it. "You were everything," she says, lingering in the doorway. Kyle is trembling, afraid now that she'll kill him in her madness. Maybe he's not as ready to die as he thought he was.

"You were everything, and they knew that," Kate says. "But they didn't know how much you needed someone. That's why you fell in love with the picture. Because you needed someone to love that much. But you, but they. They gave you someone else to hope for."

Kyle isn't sure what she's talking about, but for some reason his eyes are wet. Kate's are, too, and she wipes her face, laughing sadly.

"What year?" she asks. "What year were you going to try?"

"Nineteen ninety-five," Kyle says, pronouncing it slowly, his voice barely working. Kate nods, and she closes the door of the chamber. Kyle's breath rattles in his chest once he's shut inside the glass chamber, and he watches Kate drift over to the equipment. Kyle's breath comes faster and faster as the machine whirs to life. He feels as if he's about to be struck by lightning, and that's not far from what the experience is like, based on what he's seen in the trials. Kate turns from the input console when she's finished entering the coordinates, and lifts her hand in a wave. Kyle understands, just before he goes, that he'll never see her or any of this again. He feels it in the static-filled air just before the machine strikes him out of the universe.

He lands in the desert, twenty-three years before Connor's base was built. His clothes are gone, and his limbs are shivering so horribly that he can barely stand. When he does, he staggers around, blinded by the sun and completely naked to the elements, his feet burning on the sand. But the air. The air is so different, it's like nothing he's ever experienced. He stares up at the sky, and a huge, black bird flies across the sun, screaming down at him. Kyle laughs until he's crying, and falls backward onto his ass.

The journey into town is hard, but Kyle feels like he's been reborn, or as if he was never really born before, but now he has been, and this time he'll remember everything, the world the way it was, it will all be his. He finds a garbage bag in a park trashcan and makes into tunic, gets hooted and honked at along the highway into San Jose, and is finally offered a ride by a mini-bus full of young people who give him some real clothes and offer him weed.

"No thanks," Kyle says, mesmerized by the sight of the strangers, and by their kindness, their oblivious smiles. They all look so different from each other, their clothes and their eyes and the expressions on their faces, nothing like the people in the future.

"What happened to your clothes, man?" one of the guys asks.

"I don't know," Kyle says. "I just sort of woke up without them."

"Been there," the guy says, nodding and smiling as if Kyle has told a great joke.

They drop him off in Santa Rosa, and Kyle chews his lip for a long time, but when he gets to a busy shopping area full of people browsing with big paper bags, girls in sun dresses and children shrieking with laughter, he loses it. For awhile he just sits by a fountain and tries to get a hold of himself, wiping his face and telling people who ask if he's alright that he's fine. He thinks of the future, the disintegrating camp, the disappearance of Connor that no one can explain. And what was Kate trying to tell him before he left, how did she know he was going after Marcus? Did she even know, or did she think that Kyle was traveling back to see someone else? He shakes his head and stands, clearing his eyes again. Whatever happens with Marcus, Kyle won't let that future happen, not to this place with its ease and clean air. He's still a member of the resistance. There's still time to change everything, not just Marcus' fate.

He asks around about the garage where Marcus was working after he dropped out of school, according to the data at the base. It's not hard to find, and by the time Kyle gets there the sun is getting lower in the sky. Birds are singing in the short trees outside the garage, and hopping about in the parking lot, chirping and picking at crumbs. Kyle takes a deep breath, standing outside the garage and looking in. Both of the front garage doors are open, and there's a guy on the left side, working on a car, wiping oil on his coveralls. At first Kyle is sure that it isn't Marcus; his posture isn't right, and he's too skinny. Then the guy in coveralls reaches up to touch the back of his head as if he's deep in thought, and Kyle feels the ground disappear beneath him. Marcus used to do that; Kyle never even noticed before, not consciously, but he recognizes it now. He remembers.

He walks forward slowly, waiting for the catch, for a terminator to appear or the sky to go black with debris from an explosion, but nothing comes. The sun keeps sinking, the birds keep twittering, and before he's really ready for it, he's standing at the door of the garage, watching Marcus close up the hood on the car he was working on. Marcus sees Kyle over his shoulder and turns.

"You need some help?" he asks. Kyle almost breaks down again, chews his tongue. Marcus' face is different, younger, his hair a little longer, but his eyes are the same, and to Kyle they feel like the only constant in the universe, the bright point of light that holds everything together, all the possibilities and realities imaginable, all the hope.

"Yeah," Kyle says, swallowing the shake in his voice as Marcus walks closer. "I – are you guys hiring?"

"I don't know." Marcus grins, and it splits the world around Kyle's ears like a sonic boom. "You kind of reek of pot, dude, sure you don't want to come back tomorrow?"

"I -- what?"

"Never mind," Marcus says, laughing. He's cleaning his hands on a rag, and the calmness of the gesture, the certainty of his movements here in this world where nothing has yet been ruined, makes Kyle want to fall onto him.

"You go to Jefferson?" Marcus asks, slinging the rag over his shoulder.

"What?"

"Jefferson? High school?"

"Oh, no." Kyle laughs, tries to calm down. "Why -- why do you ask?"

"No reason, just thought maybe I knew you," Marcus says.

Marcus begins to clean up his work area, and Kyle hangs around watching him, not knowing what to do next. He turns from the garage to look out at the sky, which is pink above them. He's almost sad that he'll never again see the Marcus he lost, but he'll do anything to stop that Marcus from existing and losing his heart to Connor for nothing. He shuts his eyes and thinks about time, the possibilities stacked through it, all one on top of the other, everything really happening all at once. And then there's fate, which is something else. He turns back to Marcus, who is taking furtive peeks at Kyle as if he's trying to figure out where he's from, as if he knows that Kyle came a long way to get here.

"I'll get you an application," Marcus says, and Kyle nods, though he has no idea what Marcus is talking about. He looks back at the sky and knows that what people once thought Connor would do is now left to him, the only person alive who knows what the future might be like. The machines will send terminators after him, if they can find him. He's not sure that they'll be able to work out where he went. The reasoning behind it is not something they could ever understand.

"Here," Marcus says, appearing at Kyle's shoulder. Kyle looks up and sees him offering a piece of paper, which Kyle takes without looking at it. He can't stop staring at Marcus' eyes; he's almost afraid to.

"Are you okay?" Marcus asks, frowning a little, the older face Kyle was more familiar with visible in the lines on his forehead and around his eyes.

"I'm okay," Kyle says, standing from the stool he'd been leaning against. He looks down at his arms, which are red from his long trek through the desert. "Just a little sunburned."

They walk over to a restaurant next door, Marcus giving Kyle tips on how he might get hired, including changing into clothes that don't smell like weed. Kyle can barely hold in his disbelief about where he is, and the way he's found Marcus, cynical but soft; he buys Kyle a taco and tells him he looks like he hasn't eaten in days. Kyle has never in his life eaten a vegetable, and he marvels over the tomatoes that fall off his taco onto his plate.

"So where are you from?" Marcus finally asks, and Kyle looks up from his food, unprepared for that question.

"The future," he says, and Marcus grins. Kyle smiles back, willing to play it off as a joke for now.

"You're high," Marcus says. He kicks Kyle under the table as if they're already friends, and Kyle has to fight hard to keep his eyes from welling up, because he'll never be able to forget that the good in this world will all burn away if he doesn't figure out some way to stop Skynet between now and then. But knowing what will happen only makes him heavy with gratitude, because for Kyle the good in the world is so much clearer than the people who've always lived with it could ever understand, almost too bright to look at. He wants to put his arms around all of it and hold it close, keep it safe, Marcus more than anything, because he's got those eyes, and Kyle would have walked for twenty-three years without stopping just to see them again. It's what he's done, really, though it went by in a flash for him. He's come back, molecule by molecule, for all that's worth saving, for this.


End file.
